Thousands march and dance for LGBT rights at parades in Berlin and Budapest
- In Berlin, the parade started with a call from Klaus Lederer, Berlin’s senator for culture, to make the city a ‘queer-freedom zone’
- In Budapest, the march wound through the city centre and crossed the Danube River on the Liberty Bridge
Some 35,000 revellers marched for LGBT rights at Berlin’s annual Christopher Street Day celebration on Saturday, twice as many as expected.
The parade started with a call from Klaus Lederer, Berlin’s senator for culture, to make the city a “queer-freedom zone” in response to deteriorating safety for gays and lesbians in Hungary and neighbouring Poland.
“LGBT-free zones” have been declared in parts of Poland, while Hungary recently passed a law banning the depiction of homosexuality or gender reassignment to minors that has been denounced as discriminatory by human rights groups.
Lederer said the situation in the two EU members “sends shivers down my back.”
The senator also noted that the coronavirus pandemic had been particularly hard for some homosexuals at home as shelters were closed. He said “there is still much work to be done.”
Organisers of the parade had been expecting around 20,000 people amid social distancing rules and a ban on alcohol to combat the risk of new coronavirus infections.
